Sandstorm
by Lucillia
Summary: A future Imperial Grand Admiral and a future leader of the Rebellion take shelter from a sandstorm together.


The wind howled overhead outside the modest farmhouse. Like most such homes on Tatooine, the home was mainly underground, and this one had been arranged around an open courtyard that had been dug into a sand covered sandstone formation outside of Anchorhead generations before. He'd come here seeking understanding. What he got instead were a pair of grudgingly helpful Moisture Farmers and a small child who didn't know the meaning of personal space that seemed overly fascinated with his eyes.

When the Emperor had set him to the task of coming up with a plan to defeat Darth Vader, he was sure it was a test. Ever since Voss Parck had brought him to the Empire from the Unknown Regions, the Emperor had been testing his skill, intelligence, and loyalty to the cause. So far, he hadn't failed any of the tests he'd been given.

He could think of a dozen ways to bring down a Jedi off the top of his head, but Vader, though undoubtedly a former Jedi if his skills were any indication, didn't fit the standard mold. He didn't behave the way he would expect someone who'd been raised in the temple that the Emperor had allowed him to briefly explore would behave. His accent, though undoubtedly corrupted by his life-support suit's vocalizer didn't fit either. Though the man possessed a few pieces of artwork and bought the occasional piece at auction over the past three years, none of them fit what he knew of the Dark Lord of the Sith, and investigation into their provenance had revealed that they had all belonged to the late Senator Amidala.

Realizing that the Jedi Temple and the art collection were both dead ends, he started on a different track than usual when it came to plotting the potential downfall of the mysterious Darth Vader whose origins were shrouded in mystery to just about everyone but the Emperor, he started tracing that anomalous accent. That it was Outer Rim was a given, but where in the Outer Rim?

Not having the necessary expertise to further narrow it down, he had taken a recording of a speech that Vader had given at the Imperial Academy on Carida to the Coruscant University Language Department. One of the Cresh Usk Basic professors had managed to place Lord Vader's planet of origin as likely being Tatooine, noting certain word choices and a certain sentence structure which was common to those who were raised on that world. Someone had been giving him elocution lessons, but they hadn't erased the early influences entirely.

Traveling to Tatooine on his own dime during some of the leave he was entitled to so as not to alert anyone who didn't need to know what he was doing as to what he was doing, he started searching for clues about Lord Vader's background. Rather than stumbling about like an amateur, he frequented cantinas and other such establishments where he was certain that locals would be long-time regulars and started listening for stories that had what looked like Lord Vader's fingerprints. When they had nothing else to talk about, old-timers tended to bring up old gossip, which was exactly what he was looking for.

It had been in Anchorhead that he'd hit what was quite possibly paydirt. Apparently, the step-son of a man named Lars had come home one day out of the blue, learned that his mother had been taken by Sandpeople, gone to retrieve her, killed the lot of them, and left practically the minute his mother was buried.

He actually hadn't been heading out to the Lars family farm when he'd turned up there. Should they actually have been related to him, visiting the Larses would've been an immediate red flag to Vader who would then know that he was poking into his background and likely take measures to terminally stop him from digging any further. He'd actually been headed towards the site of the Tusken Raider massacre which the farm was on the way to when a sandstorm had come up practically out of nowhere forcing him to seek shelter.

Since the farm was the closest bit of shelter...

Owen Lars who had taken over from his recently deceased father had been understandably wary of him considering the fact that when one lived this far from civilization every stranger was a potential threat. Not wanting to get shut out in the storm as was looking might be the case considering the clothing he'd chosen to wear to the drinking establishments he'd been frequenting in search of information, he showed the man his Imperial Navy ID which should theoretically grant him houseroom anywhere in the Empire under certain billeting laws. The man looked like he was going to shoot him for a second before he restated his reasons for being there and recited which codes of Imperial Law required Lars to let him into the house to ride out the storm. Stepping back with an ill-tempered scowl, Lars turned and led him down to the home's main dining area where Lunch was apparently in progress.

"That's my wife Beru, and our boy Luke, we adopted him recently after his parents died." Owen Lars said by way of introduction, gesturing to the woman and the small toddler who were seated at the table.

"Greetings." he said as he seated himself at the table in a chair he hoped didn't belong to the head of the Lars household, considering the fact that the man was barely tolerant of him, the fact that there were a million places one could hide a body in the desert, and the fact that the only person who might look into his disappearance with any amount of dedication was Parck. As he sat down, Owen's wife got up ostensibly to serve him.

"What's your name?" the blond-haired, blue-eyed boy whom Owen had identified as his adopted son asked, looking up at him curiously.

"Mitth'raw'nuruodo, but most people call me by my core name of Thrawn." he replied, remembering how he'd been forced to break with custom and tradition when the humans who'd taught him Basic had mangled his name so badly that he'd decided to forgo the usually several years of interaction and allow them to call him by his core name as if they were close friends rather than hear them mangle it a thousand more times as they invariably failed to get it right.

It was at that point that Beru set a plate of food before him and started hovering over him asking if he wanted anything else rather than sitting back down. After indicating that what she'd given him was fine, Mrs. Lars finally returned to her own meal and they began to eat in silence. The only person at the table who wasn't somewhat tense was the small boy who was busy staring at him.

"Why're you blue like the milk?" Luke asked, breaking the somewhat stilted silence and causing Owen to give him a warning glare and Beru to give him a horrified look.

"Because I'm a Chiss." he replied wondering if he should give a longer explanation about how his skin color was a combination of genetics and the consumption of certain minerals which were common on his homeworld that tended to make their way into the plant and animal life to fend off the next few questions that he'd reputedly heard small children constantly asked. Having little experience with human young and not having had experience dealing with young of his own species in years, he was rather out of practice when it came to dealing with children. The answer he gave the boy seemed to satisfy him however, since he simply nodded in acceptance of the fact and went back to eating his food.

"Your eyes'r red." the boy said a minute later causing Owen to give him another warning glare and a slightly growled "Luke".

"Yes they are." he replied, not taking insult from the boy's factual statement.

"Why're you here?" the boy asked a second later, earning a couple of sharp exclamations of "Luke!" from Owen and his wife.

"Because of the sandstorm." he replied to the boy who had the slightly stricken expression of someone who knew they were in trouble but didn't know why or how they'd gotten that way.

Luke made no further attempts to speak to him during the rest of the meal which became a rather stilted affair that had been carried on in silence. Due to the sandstorm that was raging overhead, most of the usual afternoon chores had to be forgone, and everyone retired to the home's dugout living-room after the meal had finished. Once they'd been settled with him and Beru taking the sofa, Owen taking the chair, and Luke taking the floor somewhere near his feet, Beru pulled out some mending, Luke pulled out some toys that looked like they'd belonged to more than one generation of the Lars family, and Owen sat there and silently stared at him. Not having anything else to do, he took in his surroundings.

There wasn't all that much to take in. By every indication, the Larses were a family of rather typical Outer Rim survivor types who were mistrustful of a government that usually only contacted them when there was bad news, such as the fact that they were late in paying their taxes. Owen Lars' mistrust of the Empire was likely a carryover from a previous mistrust of the Old Republic. His being a representative of said government, albeit from a Military branch, made him something to be mistrusted until he proved otherwise. Asking the questions he wanted to ask since he had the Larses right in front of him wouldn't help foster that trust. In fact, from the looks of things, it would do quite the opposite, and if he started stupidly asking questions, he could end up leaving the home feet first despite the fact that he was an Imperial officer.

One topic of conversation that seemed to often break the ice, especially amongst humans who tended to be proud of their offspring, was people's children. It was one thing that the humans he had regularly served with over the last three years had in common with the Chiss. Non-Clone Officers on just about every ship could be heard trading stories about their families in every mess or breakroom. If he'd correctly translated some of the surreptitious conversation between some of the clones that he'd overheard, some of the clones had done the same as well. Though how the heck they managed to marry and produce offspring without their superiors noticing and stopping them, he didn't know.

"Luke's a bit of a rare name. A Commander I served under last year who gave that name to his son mentioned that fact. If I remember correctly, it's an old Naboo word for Light." he said to open a possible conversation, remembering how Parck had commented on the sudden rise in popularity of names from the Emperor's homeworld of Naboo when they'd gotten back from the Unknown regions and Parck had found that his staunchly traditionalist Corellian friend had gone and named his youngest daughter Leia, which most definitely wasn't Corellian in origin. Parck had also commented on how the poor children who'd been given "Offworlder" names would be stuck with them long after they'd become unpopular.

"His mother did that because he was born on the day the Empire was founded." Owen said as if he thought such a thing should be important to him despite the fact that billions of other children of varying species across the galaxy shared that exact same date of birth.

"My cousin was always throwing her heart into everything she did, from lace making to being a member of the Rep- er, Imperial Wives Brigade." Beru said, not looking up from the small shirt she was mending. "Unfortunately, charity work and Mos Eisley didn't mix."

"I'm sorry for your loss." he said, thanking Parck for teaching him what to say in a situation where one is discussing the loss of a stranger's family member. Personally, he thought it sounded insincere. If you didn't know the person who died and they didn't die right in front of you, you didn't mourn their passing and unless you were a bleeding heart who was sad for the loss of a life, any life, you weren't really sorry that the deceased was gone.

"We all knew it was going to happen someday." Owen Lars grumbled from his chair as Luke ran over his foot with a toy speeder. "That girl was outspoken, reckless in the extreme, and her taste in men...I'm guessing she thought she could fix him or something."

"What brings you to Tatooine if you don't mind my asking?" Beru asked, rather obviously trying to change the subject.

"I'm researching a superior officer of mine at the behest of his superior." he replied carefully, knowing that if these people were actually related to Darth Vader through marriage they likely wouldn't want that fact to get out and would take measures to prevent it. "There had been some indication that he'd been lying about his background, and I was asked to look into it. An analysis of his speech patterns had indicated that Tatooine was his homeworld as was stated in his personnel file, but some gossip at the cantina in Anchorhead revealed an incident that fit his pattern of behavior, placing his stated Mos Eisley origins in doubt. I was heading out to view the site where the incident occurred when the sandstorm started up. Since your residence was the closest, I decided to take shelter here. I do apologize for forcing my company on you."

Owen seemed to relax at this and take his apology at face value.

"You're probably not going to find anything of use at the site. The sand buries everything around here." Beru commented as she set the small shirt aside and pulled a sock from her mending basket.

"True, but a look at the area and the environment might give me some clue as to what had been going through his mind at the time. If I can understand that, I may be able to understand the man and find out what if anything else he's hiding." he replied.

"So, you're basically a detective." Owen said, giving him a look that seemed to say "I don't know if I should trust you more or less since you're law enforcement."

"I'm chiefly a strategist." he replied honestly, sticking to a story that was close enough to the truth that he wouldn't have to remember too much of it. "But, this isn't the first time I've gone outside my parameters."

It truly wasn't the first time he'd gone outside his parameters in order to obtain results. Not even close. In fact, going outside his parameters - and breaking Chiss law - had been what had gotten him booted from the Chiss Expansionary Defense Force and exiled from his home. Usually, going outside his parameters payed off, but all it ever took was one mistake and...

"I see." Beru said. Though what she saw, he didn't know. She seemed to be one of those quiet people who had hidden depths to them that even those closest to them couldn't begin to guess at.

As the silence that followed Beru's statement stretched, he began to realize that the family he sat in the midst of was one of those groups that could sit for hours on end in contented silence. That silence had become strained due to his presence however. It wasn't like he could leave without getting sandblasted however. Deciding not to force conversation where it wasn't wanted, he leaned back in his seat and watched Luke play on the floor.

Luke, apparently sensing the attention that had been turned towards him, turned to look back at him curiously. After staring at him for about a minute, the boy who was apparently one of those children who weren't afraid to go up to strangers then got up from his place on the floor, walked up to him, crawled onto his lap - earning himself a couple yells of "Luke!" from his adoptive parents - and got into his face, nearly pressing his nose against his as a small pair of blue eyes peered intently into his red ones.

"Your eyes are pretty!" Luke said.

Odd. Most humans found red eyes disturbing for some reason that nobody knew the evolutionary cause of since nobody knew which planet was the humans' original homeworld. Many of the officers he worked with tended to repress shudders when they were forced to look him in the eyes. Jorj Car'dass and his shipmates had all stared at his eyes back when they'd first met, and not in an admiring way.

"Get off him Luke!" Owen yelled.

The boy drew back as if scalded and scurried off his lap. He then turned back to the scattering of toys he'd been playing with, but had been halted by an order to go to his room. He had to be told once more before he complied.

"I'm sorry about that." Owen said as he bent down to pick up the toys Luke had left lying on the floor.

"It's alright. Small children tend to be curious about new things." he replied.

"Do you have any children of your own?" Beru asked.

"No." he replied. "I joined my homeworld's military at a young age, and there was never any time before I left to join the Empire."

"Oh," Beru said as she grabbed another item from her mending basket. On worlds like these, nothing was discarded if it could be repaired and/or reused or re-purposed.

The awkward silence returned again and remained long after Beru finished her mending and got up to prepare dinner. There really wasn't much he could say to the man whose home he'd pretty much barged into, the man who may or may not have been Darth Vader's step-brother. The fact that the man still lived here and wasn't obviously wealthy said something about the relationship between the two if that was the case. That the man still lived also said something about their relationship. If he was Lord Vader's step-brother that was.

Without Luke who was still being punished for his breach of social protocol at the table, dinner was a rather stilted affair much like the lunch he'd interrupted with his arrival had been. Aside from queries about if there was anything he wanted up to and including seconds which the family could ill afford to give him, there had been no conversation.

"We'd better turn in early." Owen said the minute the meal was over. "If the storm blows itself out during the night, I'm going to need an early start in order to dig out the vaporators."

Relieved that he wouldn't have to try making any after-supper conversation, he stood by while Beru made a small bed for him on the sofa. After a few hours of laying there, he managed a slight doze, prepared to wake up at even the slightest hint of danger. The only thing that disturbed him during the night however had been Owen who'd gotten up to make a leftover sandwich.

The next morning, the sand was still howling by overhead. Grumbling over this setback, Owen helped his wife prepare a breakfast for four before going into the back of the dwelling in order to wake his adopted son up and get him ready for the day. A somewhat bleary-eyed Luke turned up at the breakfast table along with Owen fifteen minutes later fully dressed and with his hair neatly combed. Over the course of the rather quiet meal, the boy began to perk up significantly.

After breakfast, things looked like they would follow the pattern that they'd followed after lunch the day before. Rather than trying to make awkward conversation with the adults, he decided to engage the only person who seemed willing to talk with him in conversation. Owen looked at him in askance when he'd shifted to the floor near Luke, but made no further moves to stop him.

The next few hours were spent trying to understand the mind and world of a three year-old. It was a strange place that was peopled with the likes of the imaginary Quiggin where landspeeders acted like space ships which visited planets that were found only in cartoons. By the time Beru who'd been quietly reading while Owen supervised his playtime with Luke had gotten up to prepare lunch, he was grateful to have something else to do since trying to understand a child was a somewhat taxing endeavour. Making a decision, he got up and followed Beru into the kitchen.

"I was wondering if you would accept my assistance in preparing the noon meal." he said when Beru turned to ask why he was there.

"Your help would be appreciated, thank you." Beru replied before handing him a cutting board, a knife, and some sort of root vegetable and saying "Could you please slice these?"

The look in the woman's eyes said "I'm trusting you, so please don't break it.". Having no intention of breaking her trust, he took the vegetables, the board, and the knife. As he chopped the vegetables, he looked around the kitchen and noted that it was rather utilitarian with little ornamentation aside from a carved stone box that looked out of place. The spatial proportions and design seemed to indicate that its creator was human, and the awkwardness of the carvings told him that the artist was either particularly unskilled or a small child.

"What is that?" he asked catching Beru's attention before pointing towards the box.

"It was Shmi's." Beru replied sadly. "Her son made it before he left."

"Left?" he asked, knowing he was skating on thin ice, but Beru had opened the door for the question.

"Someone...Someone purchased him five years before Cliegg bought and married Shmi." Beru said, looking as if she were carefully leaving something out.

He decided not to press the issue, and turned back to slicing the tubers he'd been given instead. If that box was what he thought it was, it had given him a glimpse into the child mind of Lord Vader. The words purchased and bought had made one thing obvious about the background of the box's creator even if it hadn't been Vader. Shmi had apparently been loved very much considering the amount of time that would've been spent making it, and the risk that the artist's owner would decide that time had been wasted or the materials stolen and punish him accordingly.

Lunch was a bit less tense since the ice had apparently been broken with Beru. That was until Luke piped up with a comment that someone named Lorna Jinz had been sorry, but there'd been people and someone had agreed. Beru had gone strangely quiet at this, Owen had given the boy a strange look, and the tension returned full-force before almost doubling.

After lunch, Beru had handed him her datapad and apologized over the fact that it was all she could offer because Luke had dismantled the entertainment console a week before he'd arrived and they couldn't get a "new" one until next month when the Jawas were due to roll through. After asking him to keep a close eye on it, she and her husband retreated to their bedroom where it sounded like they were having an intense discussion of some sort.

"Sorry about that." Beru said when she and Owen emerged from their room nearly an hour later. "My sister seems to think that Luke talks to the dead and tends to encourage him to repeat anything his imaginary friends say to him. We've been trying to get him to stop, especially since it frightens some of our more superstitious neighbors, but the usual punishments don't work."

"Seeing as I don't know anybody named Lorna Jinz, I seriously doubt that your boy can speak to the dead." he replied. "Since he seems to be too young for it to be a mental disorder, the boy should eventually stop this habit on his own when he realizes it's not normal and that he could be ostracized because of it."

The Larses looked relieved. Apparently, they'd been afraid that he'd react negatively to their son's antics. Despite the fact that it was completely harmless, the boy really should be discouraged from engaging in such behavior since some credulous idiot who didn't know anything about the Force might report him which could bring any amount of trouble down on the Lars family.

The tension eased somewhat after that, and that afternoon progressed much like the previous afternoon except that he was reading one of Beru's novels on the datapad she'd trusted him with while she knitted and Owen watched Luke play rather than watched him. Unlike the previous evening, Luke wasn't sent to his room without dinner.

Several minutes after yet another meal where Luke provided most of the conversation, the boy who was now dressed for bed came to where Beru was making a bed for him on the couch and held out a rather worn holobook.

"Will you read to me?" Luke asked, holding up the book and looking directly at him.

Looking towards Beru who would undoubtedly provide a reason why he couldn't read the book to the small boy, he instead found permission. That was apparently Luke's cue to grab his hand and drag him off to his small bedroom. As the small boy crawled into bed, he cast about for some place to sit, eventually settling on a small chest that was located at the end of the boy's bed. Once he and the boy were both settled, he opened the book and started reading.

It took two readthroughs of The Little Lost Bantha Cub before Luke finally went to sleep. Deactivating and closing the holobook which was on its last legs, he adjusted the covers of the boy's bed so the boy was properly covered and made his way to the sofa where his own bed was waiting.

The sandstorm let up during the night, and rather than imposing on his hosts' hospitality any further, he set off as soon as the suns began to rise. After a long journey, he reached the site of the Tusken Raider massacre which had apparently been preserved by the Sandpeople. An exploration of the site provided him with some insight, but he also had another potential lead to work with that he was sure would provide a great deal more if it panned out.

Turning back to Anchorhead, he went to the Records office and requested a copy of a marriage certificate for which he only had one full name and a first name and no date. After a bit of searching, the clerk found it. About eight years before the founding of the Empire, Shmi _Skywalker_ of Mos Espa had married one Cliegg Lars of Anchorhead. Realizing that he had indeed hit paydirt since Skywalker had still been a bit of a household name when Parck had brought him from the Unknown Regions, he headed out to Mos Espa in order to view the environment in which Lord Vader had spent his formative years.

A week later when one of his neighbors made a comment about a blue guy who'd been in the Mos Espa slave quarters scraping at buildings in order to get at some twenty year-old graffitti, Owen made a comment on how dedicated to his job that Imperial who'd been trapped with him and his family during that sandstorm was. Beru replied that he had to be because the Empire was forcing non-humans out of the military, which was something her sister Dama had told her. Both Owen and Beru felt a twinge of pity for the man who was obviously career military in a military that didn't want him to make a career of it. Neither of them pieced together exactly who it was that the man had been looking into because frankly, there were a bunch of incidents the old guys who hung out at one of the cantinas in Anchorhead gossiped about, and the slave quarters in Mos Espa had been home to hundreds of humans over the decades, some of whom had ended up out on their side of Anchorhead, including one young slave who had killed his owners while they slept, used their deactivation wand in order to shut down his tracer so he wouldn't be blown up, and ran off never to be seen again a few years after Anakin won the Boonta Eve Classic.

By the time that Thrawn learned exactly who the adorable three year-old he'd tucked in was, it was too late to say or do anything about it since Luke Skywalker had rather spectacularly burst onto the scene and destroyed the Death Star. Tucking someone in when they are small and adorable doesn't automatically make them like family when they grow up. Especially if they grow up to join the side opposing the one you are on. Since Luke was part of the Rebellion and later New Republic, Thrawn had absolutely no compunctions against treating him like the enemy.

As for Luke, having been three at the time, Luke remembered none of this. The description of Thrawn sparked a vague sense of familiarity when he heard it, but that was all. It wasn't like he'd be immediate friends with Thrawn if he remembered anyway. A three year-old could afford to be friends with an Imperial, a twenty-eight year-old who'd fought the Empire for years and fought what remained of it for years after that could not.


End file.
